First Impressions
by Susan Hillwig
Summary: What happened the first time Anakin turned C3PO on? Maybe he wasn't the droid we all know and love...


_I just joined the site recently, with plans on posting something rather large in the future over in the Comics section. However, I figured I should start with something small just in case my system isn't compatible (I'd hate to type all that up only to have to do it over!). Stumped for ideas, I asked my husband for suggestions, and this was the first one he came up with that I wouldn't be embarrassed to post. Please keep in mind that this is off-the-cuff. If I goof up on a factual detail, don't get mad, just roll with it._

_**Disclaimer: **If you don't know who owns Star Wars, what you doing here_

_**Continuity:** It's sometime before Episode One. I dunno…longer ago and further away than usual…._

**First Impressions **

_Oh, this is gonna be so wizard!_

Little Anakin Skywalker sat on his bed, tools spread all around him and what looked like a large metal egg laying in his lap. It wasn't an egg, but things were definitely hatching in that room. Grand plans, ideas for impressing the heck out of his friends with his new contraption, the stuff that an eight-year-old boy's dreams were made of. _None of the other guys have a droid,_ he thought. _Not a cool one, anyways. Just boring ones that tune moisture vaporators or talk to other machines all day, just BLEEP -BLEEP and DEET-DEET and nonsense like that. _He picked up the object and held it before his face, looking into the dim photoreceptors bugging out of the droid's rust-spotted skull. He still couldn't believe his luck: he'd found the cranial housing of an honest-to-goodness protocol unit lying under a pile of burned-out droid parts. Those things _talked_! In real, intelligible _Basic_! His friends would be _so_ jealous…if he could get it working.

He flipped the head over so it was upside-down, the exposed wires in the neck facing him. With nimble fingers, he picked through them until he found the one that should connect to the droid's central processor and memory log, then the one for the power converter. He snaked them out a little so he could have some slack as he spliced the wires into the handheld 'puter he'd "borrowed" from Watto's shop earlier in the day. It was a nifty little gadget, with a secondary power cell for on-the-fly repairs and an easy-to-use Droid/Basic interface so you could navigate even the most complex subroutines. With luck, the droid's memory functions would be intact, and he'd have it up and running before Mom called him for dinner.

As he connected the 'puter's systems to the head, Anakin wondered what it had been used for before landing up in a junk pile. Protocol units were usually owned by rich folks and, aside from Hutts, he didn't know of anybody rich on Tatooine. When people around here came into money, they usually didn't stick around long. Maybe it was a lower-order model, like the kind some companies use to deal with the public on lux-liners and getaway planets, with just enough vocal capability to answer simple questions and take orders. Not as chatty, but he could fix that.

The photoreceptors blinked a couple times as fresh power flowed through the circuits, and the screen on the 'puter began to scroll information:

**Cognitive Functions Interrupted. Continue?**

Anakin tapped the appropriate keys, and the head began to yammer away in a grating, nasal voice. " …risk you take when you buy something used, pal. Should have read your contract a little closer. Best I can offer is…" The droid stopped talking, its eyes shifting slightly from left to right. "Where'd he go?"

"Where'd who go?"

The droid looked up at Anakin from the boy's lap. "The Devaronian. He was just standing here…" The droid stopped talking again. "Mind telling me where the rest of me went, kid?"

The boy shrugged. "Dunno, all I found was your head."

The photoreceptors shifted upward, simulating an eye-roll. "Well, that's just great. How the hell am I supposed to do my job with no damn body? What, is Krek planning on propping my noggin up on a desk and plugging me into the comm system so I can take calls all day? I'm a floor unit, for crying out loud! I'm made to mingle!" The droid focused on Anakin again, saying, "Look, kid, carry me over to Krek. I need to have a word with that guy."

"Um, I don't think I can do that," he said, biting his bottom lip.

"C'mon, stop wasting my time, I gotta get back to work. Time is credits, you know."

"I hate to tell you this, but…I don't think you're working for this Krek guy anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"I kind of found you in a junkyard. Matter of fact," he said, glancing down at the readout, "it looks like you've been inactive for about 20 years or so."

The droid's photoreceptors dimmed, then blazed up again as it vented. "I can't believe this! Nine years of loyal service, and he dumps me for scrap! That bantha-loving, son of a…"

Anakin slapped a hand over the droid's audio output. "Shut up! You're getting too loud!"

"_Surra_," it said, the word muffled by the boy's hand. Anakin removed it, and the droid repeated, "Sorry. You gotta understand, though, this is a bit of a shock. I mean, one moment I'm haggling with a guy over the terms in his contract, the next I'm talking to you." It paused. "I told Krek we should instill a 'No blasters on premises' policy, but _noooo_, that would involve getting guard-droids, and that's more money. No good, cheap…"

"Who's Krek?"

"My boss…_ex_-boss. Honest Krek's Used Skimmers, Speeders, And Swoops. 'You can't find it, you don't need it,' that's our motto."

"Never heard of it."

"Fine by me. Hopefully that means the jerk went out of business." The droid's eyes shifted again as it took in the room. "So, I guess you're the new master. Not exactly a step up, but I'll make do. You got a name, kid?"

"It's Anakin. Anakin Skywalker."

"Pleased to meet you, Anakin. I'm C-3PO, human/cyborg relations.

………………………………

As she stood in the kitchen, Shmi Skywalker could hear her son talking in the other room. She didn't find it unusual, as the boy had a tendency to do that when he was working on something. It seemed to help him figure out problems faster, and she knew that he must be working on something rather large. When he'd come home from his shift at Watto's, he'd been toting a large sack that sounded like it contained something metallic. The boy was always tinkering, always finding things to spruce up and use around the house. Shmi encouraged him to do so, as long as Watto never found out (goodness knows what the Toydarian would do if he found out how much stuff Anakin had snuck out of that shop). Her desire to not stifle his creativity, however, was coming at odds with her motherly concern as to what was going on in his room: she could swear that she heard someone _answering _the boy when he talked.

When she called the boy out for dinner, he came into the kitchen with a grin on his face. "Your new project must be coming along well," she said as he sat down at the table.

Anakin looked up at her with wide eyes. "I wasn't doing anything," he said in a way that implied that he really _was_.

"Oh? And what did you bring in with you earlier?"

He stared down at his plate. "It was supposed to be a surprise," he told her. "I'm still working on it."

"May I see it anyways?" Her curiosity as to what had been going on behind his bedroom door was growing.

"Okay, I'll go get him."

Him?_ What is he doing in there? _Shmi watched Anakin go back down the hall to his room, thoughts of what might have been in that sack bouncing through her head. He returned a moment later with a stripped-down droid head balanced on one of Watto's diagnostic 'puters. He set it down on the table in front of his mother.

"Isn't he cool? I found him in the far end of the yard today," Anakin said, beaming with pride over his discovery.

"Yes, very…very cool," she answered.

The droid's eyes shifted over to look at Anakin. "I don't think she's impressed, kid."

Shmi let out an involuntary yelp. So _that's_ what she'd been hearing. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were…"

"What? Capable of carrying a conversation? Lady, that's my _life_, or at least it was until that damn spice-sniffer Krek threw me out like a old pair of undershorts. I tell ya, if I ever see that guy again, I'm gonna make him wish he'd wiped my memory-circuits first."

Shmi looked at her son. "Is he always so…colorful?"

Anakin just kept smiling like a proud papa. "The other kids are just gonna _die_ when they see him," he said. "Even without a body, he's a helluva lot cooler than any of their droids."

"Ani! Language!"

"What? What did I say?"

She glared at the droid. "You should watch what you say around children."

"Oh, nice, blame the new guy. I ain't said nothing to him that he probably hasn't heard a million times on the holovids."

"We don't _have_ a holovid player," she responded coolly.

"Well, out on the street, then…or maybe from you when you've got your skirts in a twist."

Shmi's face reddened, and Anakin stepped in before she could do something like toss the head across the room. "I'm sorry, Mom. Really. And so's Threepio. I think maybe he's got a short-circuit or something. I mean, he has been sitting in a junk pile for twenty years."

"Don't go and bend over for this lady, kid," Threepio said. "You're young, so you don't understand women yet. See, I've learned a lot on the job: women ain't good for nothing except picking out the paint color on your new ride and co-signing the paperwork. They _think _they know everything, and if you let them, they'll run your whole life into the ground."

"Ani, you had best find out what this foul-mouthed thing's short-circuit is, or else I will wash out his vocal processor with antibac gel. Now, take him back to your room, dinner's getting cold."

"Yes'm," Anakin mumbled, and picked up the head and 'puter. When he got back to his room, he shut the door, placed the equipment on the bed, and started giggling like a maniac.

………………………………

Days passed. Any time Anakin wasn't working in the shop, he was either scrounging up parts to use on Threepio or listening to the droid's tales of life in used transport business. It had a fondness for relating exactly what it thought of just about every sentient species that had ever crossed its metallic path, and its opinion was usually not good…nor was it lacking in expletives. The boy quickly learned more profanity in a week than he'd ever heard in his life. His new vocabulary did not go unnoticed by his mother, who had no problem with giving him a good swat on the rump whenever his language turned salty. It didn't take long for Shmi to realize that her son had no intention of "fixing" the more annoying aspects of Threepio's personality. In fact, she was fairly sure that Anakin was taking delight in the way the droid back talked to her, despite the fact that it was still nothing more than a head.

Shmi loved her son, and would do just about anything for him…but there was no way she was going to put up with that droid's sassy mouth one more day.

About two weeks after Threepio came into their lives, Watto had to make a trip to Toshi Station to take delivery of some special-order equipment, and he took Anakin along with him to help with the transport. The two of them would be gone most of the day: a perfect opportunity for Shmi to sit down and have a talk with the newest member of the Skywalker household.

Once she was sure Ani and Watto were long gone, Shmi went into the boy's room and took a seat at his workbench. The head lay there on its ever-present diagnostic 'puter, powered down while its pint-size master was away. She propped the head up so it was looking at her, then turned on the power feed.

The photoreceptors stuttered on, and Threepio said, "Oh, it's you."

"Don't sound too happy to see me," she answered. "I thought it was time I set you straight on a few things. First, your language."

"What's the matter? Can't take a little brutal honesty?"

"On the contrary, I think honesty is very important. I also think that _tact_ is important, and that's a quality that you are seriously lacking. You also have a mouth like a Corellian spice-peddler, and it's beginning to rub off on my son. I've raised him the best I can under very difficult circumstances, and you, my dear little machine, have become the worst influence upon him that I could imagine. If you wish to continue having any sort of cognizant existence, I suggest you rethink how you act around both me and Anakin."

The photoreceptors dimmed, suggesting the narrowing of eyes. "I don't bow down to any skirt. If I learned anything on that used transport lot, it's this: never back down when you've got the upper hand. I mean, what do I get if I start acting 'proper', or at least what you consider proper?"

"'Get'? This _isn't_ a negotiation."

"_Everything's_ negotiable, baby."

Shmi sighed. This was what she was afraid of how do you reason with a chauvinistic, foul-mouthed droid?

Then she glanced at the diagnostic 'puter. _Perhaps more drastic measures are in order,_ she thought, and picked it up.

Threepio's eyes brightened up again. "Hey, what're you…AAAH!" The head fell forward as the wires connecting it to the device were yanked.

"I tried it the nice way," she told Threepio as she scrolled through the droid's subroutines, "but you wouldn't have it. So you've forced me to get creative."

Threepio laughed, or at least as close to a laugh as an electronically-produced voice could get. "What're you gonna do, put a filter on my language files? Forget it, lady. Whatever you do to me, Anakin can fix. That kid's _parsecs_ ahead of you when it comes to programming."

"I don't need to be smarter than him, not with this. Besides, you're going to help me."

Threepio laughed again. "Oh, yeah! Sure! Like I'd really help you corrupt my…" The droid stopped when Shmi flipped the screen around so Threepio could read what she'd highlighted:

**Personality Index**

"Oh, hell," it groaned.

………………………………

Anakin rushed home from the shop, relieved that they were _finally _home. The trip seemed to take forever, and he was anxious to test out the neural coupling he'd picked up at Toshi Station. Threepio's old one was damaged beyond repair, and without one, connecting the head to a body in any sort of functional way would be impossible. He'd gotten started on constructing a body, but that missing piece had stalled his progress. Now he could really get cracking.

"Mom, I'm home!" he called out as he ran in the front door.

"Ah, Master Anakin has returned!" a chipper, slightly-accented voice said from the vicinity of the kitchen.

Anakin skidded to a halt. Who the hell was that? "Mom? Do we got company or something?"

"Come in the kitchen, Ani," she said.

Anakin did as he was told, albeit slowly. From the doorway, he could se his mother sitting at the table, siping tea, and Threepio's head sitting before her, balanced upright in a small mixing bowl. The wires connecting it to the 'puter trailed out over the rim of the bowl.

"Master Anakin, I'm so glad you made it home safely," Threepio chirped. "I've heard that the way to Toshi Station can be rather treacherous this time of year."

Anakin let out a shriek. "_Mom! What did you do to him!_" He ran to the table and stared at the head.

"Well, you seemed to be having trouble locating that 'short circuit', so I decided to help you out."

"What happened to his voice?"

"Do you like it? It was under the vocal modification index." She took another sip of tea. "I always liked the way Alderaanians spoke. Very cultured, refined."

"Yes, I find it to be a very marked improvement," the droid said.

"I thought you said people from Alderaan were nothing but stuck-up little prisses?" Anakin asked the droid.

"Master Anakin, please! That is not the sort of language you should use in front of a woman, especially your mother." Threepio's eyes shifted from the boy to Shmi. "I really must apologize again, Madam, for speaking to your son in such a manner. Goodness knows what sort of damage I might have inflicted in the future if you hadn't helped me clear out all those unnecessary files."

"'Unnecessary files'?" Anakin echoed, glaring at his mother.

"Well," Shmi said, "once I switched his personality file to one of the original factory presets, he simply couldn't live with himself if I let him keep all those nasty little epithets in his memory banks, so we purged them from every circuit we could find. He's a perfect gentleman now, not to mention a wonderful conversationalist." She set down her tea for a moment. "Did you know he had buried in there programs for over six million forms of communication?"

_"I am rather proud of that," Threepio said, "and now that we've freed up all that memory space, I can use those programs to their fullest extent. Master Anakin, would you be interested in learning the intricate tense-structures of Bocce?"_

Anakin's face reddened until it looked like his head might explode. "You _ruined _him! He was cool before, but now you went and turned him into a…a stupid translator unit!" He stormed down the hall to his room, yelling, "I'm never speaking to either of you ever again!" followed by the slamming of his bedroom door.

"How rude," Threepio said.

"He'll get over it," Shmi told the droid, and went back to drinking her tea.

_**The End** _

_Thanks for reading. Post a review and let me know what you think. Also, keep an eye on my profile for when I put up my "magnum opus" I'm hoping to have it in the Comics section by mid-to-late summer. See you then!_


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